Ontario X-Ray Thief Gets 3-Month Sentence

A 37-year-old Toronto man who stole thousands of silver-laden X-rays from across Ontario was sentenced in an Ottawa courtroom Wednesday to a three-month conditional sentence.

Billy Thomas Demitro had pleaded guilty in March after Ottawa police arrested and charged him earlier in the month with stealing some 30,000 X-rays.

Demitro had spent 24 days in jail awaiting bail. He will serve two months of his sentence under house arrest. He was also sentenced to 18 months of probation.

Police said the X-rays were taken while Demitro impersonated an employee of a recycling company. They said he later melted down the X-rays to strip them of valuable silver — the price of which has been selling for more than $30 an ounce.

The X-rays were confiscated from a U-Haul truck the man was driving after a failed attempt to acquire X-rays in Smiths Falls, Ont., about 75 kilometres southwest of Ottawa.